


finding ourselves in each other

by bowlingfornerds



Category: The 100
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And all that jazz, F/M, Road Trip, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-16
Updated: 2016-04-16
Packaged: 2018-06-02 14:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6570196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bowlingfornerds/pseuds/bowlingfornerds
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bellamy and Clarke are together after eighteen years of being best friends, so they take a trip to get away from everything else and just be in love for a while. </p><p>Five moments from their two months away from Ark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	finding ourselves in each other

**Author's Note:**

> SO it's been three weeks since I uploaded last but I have excuses. I was away for ten days at a convention where I worked, and then I just had plain old writers block. This is me trying to work through that block and so I don't love everything I've written here, but it's a start.
> 
> Prompts would be appreciated SO MUCH to get me back into the swing of things before I get overloaded with work for my exams next month so that's on my tumblr, tempestaurora (that I really can't be bothered to link to right now).

**i**

“Just imagine,” Bellamy smiled, looking up at the sky from where the two of them leant against the front of his beat up truck. “The world could be ending and we wouldn’t even know it.” Clarke’s smile was rye, humouring as she nodding and spotted a dog in the clouds above her.

“What sort of apocalypse?” she asked.

“What?”

“If the world was ending right now – us out here on our own, away from civilisation – what sort of apocalypse do you think it would be?” Bellamy glanced down at her, his elbows on the hot metal of the truck, his threadbare t-shirt shifting gently in the breeze.

“I’m all for aliens,” he replied after a beat. Clarke raised her eyebrows.

“Really?”

“Yeah. They’re out there somewhere, so they could come here, take over maybe?”

“Why do you think they haven’t already?”

“Organising troops,” he said immediately. “Takes some time.” The two of them grinned at one another – best friends and so in love that the world could succumb to extra-terrestrial beings and they wouldn’t care as long as they were with each other. There was something so pure about the way they felt; something so dangerous and damning too, like they would take to the darkest corners of their beings just to protect one another. Bellamy’s smile broke for a second before coming easy again. “I was talking to Jasper and Monty about this, actually, before the trip.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “I’m pretty sure they were high, but Monty was rambling about how maybe they haven’t attacked Earth yet – a, because they could be less advanced than us, so we have time, but two – b,” he corrected. “Maybe in the same way other planets won’t sustain us, Earth might not have conditions that could keep them going, and so they can’t risk it.”

Clarke nodded slowly, approvingly. “That makes sense.”

“What about you, though?”

“What about me?”

“What’s your preferred form of Armageddon?”

“Zombies,” Clarke smiled.

“Cliché,” Bellamy retorted.

“No, it isn’t!” she laughed, lightly hitting him. Bellamy laughed too, catching her hand in his and pulling her towards him, his lips landing on hers quickly and sweetly before they moved back into their spots. Clarke’s hand dropped from his and she used it to brush her hair from her eyes. “I think having a virus that brings people back from the dead would be cool. We’d eventually meet them and probably have some dramatic deaths, but whatever – fighting the undead sounds pretty cool.”

Bellamy eyed her for a moment before shaking his head.

“I can’t believe I’m dating a zombie-lover.”

“Better than being with an alien-freak.” They laughed; the cliff edge where they were parked lighting up with their laughter and filling the space between them and the rolling hills they looked at. The sun wasn’t as bright as their happiness, and the drop to the bottom of the cliff as large as their love, and the two of them stood, happy and alive, for a moment longer, before their mouths found one another and their hands wandered across each other’s bodies.

 

**ii**

“How much money do we have?” Clarke asked mildly, eyes scanning the menu in front of her. They sat in the shade outside a small café; cobblestone road at their feet and pigeons swooping down nearby. The sky was a brilliant blue and the whole moment felt quite scenic – like something neither of them ever believed they’d experience.

“Enough,” Bellamy replied. “You can get some more out though, right?” He glanced at her over the top of his menu and Clarke pushed her shades up from her eyes to the top of her head.

“I’ll do it when we leave,” she agreed. It was the easiest way for her mother to lose the trail as the two of them drove around the country, finding themselves and one another; recreating their bodies, their lives, their feelings, from the ground up – new people meeting each other over and over every day, footprints disappearing behind them as their cells regenerated to become different and new each morning.

“We can cover lunch easily, don’t worry,” Bellamy said. They spent a quiet moment choosing their foods; various baguettes, sandwiches and soups were on offer, but Clarke didn’t want anything hot on such a warm day. Eventually, a pretty brunette in an apron wandered out to meet them; squinting in the sun and looking down at them with a smile.

“Have you decided?” she asked. Clarke nodded, looking over to Bellamy. He nodded for her to start.

“I’d like a Diet Coke with ice,” she began, glancing back down at the menu as the waitress scribbled her pencil against a notepad. “And a banana split?” The girl smiled down at her; maybe surprised like Bellamy was.

“Some lunch,” he said dryly, humour laced in his tone. Clarke shrugged as she looked over to him.

“Coca Cola with ice and,” he looked at his menu for a moment longer. “A strawberry sundae, please.” Clarke’s face broke out into a grin as the waitress nodded, taking their menus and heading back inside. She didn’t need to say a thing, because Bellamy spoke again. “You seemed to have a better idea than I did,” he told her.

“Ice cream is always a good idea,” Clarke replied. She stretched out her bare legs into the sun, shading hitting her short-clad thighs. Her flip flops were almost off her feet and her toes, baby blue from where Bellamy had painted them one day so long ago – another life, maybe – were paler in the sun.

For a moment, they let the quiet wash over them; let it sink in that they were alone out in the world, happy, perfect, at peace. They had a beat up truck called Delilah and each other in a scenic town with the beaming sunshine.

“It would never be like this in Ark,” Bellamy said, low, quiet, almost as if he didn’t want her to hear. But she did and she nodded, a sad fact that wouldn’t _break_ them, but it sure wouldn’t help them stick together.

“It wouldn’t,” she agreed. “Things would be more difficult there.”

“We’re adults,” he reminded her, himself, the world. They were adults, they could make their own decisions. They were eighteen and free.

“We’re adults,” she repeated. “But Octavia isn’t.” Bellamy’s jaw tightened for a second and Clarke reached across the table, her hand closing over his on the warm metal.

“Octavia has her Dad,” he said. “She doesn’t need me.”

“She’ll always need you,” Clarke replied, sure. “But she wouldn’t blame you, you know, for doing this.”

“What if I never came back?” Clarke opened her mouth to say something, but the waitress reappeared, drinks in hand.

“Your ice creams will be out shortly,” she smiled, placing the glasses down, dripping with condensation. Clarke pulled her hand away from Bellamy’s, and he just stared at the place it used to be.

“We’ll go back eventually,” she told him. “When we’re ready.” Clarke placed her hand against her glass and closed her eyes for a moment, relishing in the cold of the drink. Her eyes flickered open to find Bellamy watching her intently.

“I love you,” he told her. Clarke smiled.

“I love you, too,” she replied. Every word was laced with sincerity and it was a kind of love Clarke never thought she’d know. Bellamy raised his glass to his lips and sipped at the drink, before contorting his face in disgust.

“Gross,” he complained. “Diet.” He reached over, plucking Clarke’s glass from her hand and trying that. After a moment, he nodded. “I’ll never get how you like that stuff.” Clarke rolled her eyes, picking up her new glass.

“It’s _healthy_ ,” she grinned.

“Healthy? It’ll still rot your teeth.”

“But I won’t get fat,” she laughed back.

 

**iii**

They were born to a city and they knew how they worked. Bellamy and Clarke wove in between people and prams on the pavements, towering buildings on every side, the sky just a distant dream tinted with grey. Their fingers interlaced, a binding lock that neither could pull away from, and they didn’t speak much, wandering through the crowds.

“What do you want to do today?” Bellamy asked eventually. They’d been in the city for about half an hour, having arrived that morning. The two of them had driven since five am, anywhere they wanted to go, taking a road and following it until they had a bright idea that would funnel them for the next few days. Clarke felt the weight of her phone in her jacket pocket, turned off both to conserve battery and to avoid phone calls. They’d joked about getting burner phones, on the first few days of the trip, but instead just switched off the devices and let their parents just _try_ to find them – they wouldn’t.

“I don’t know,” Clarke mused, her eyes scouring the signs and billboards. On their right a courtyard began to open up; a gap between the monoliths. Steps led up to a fountain, and after that some more led to a building – a university it seemed. People moved in and out of the doors and Clarke noticed that their crowd that they’d been walking in were mostly turning off up to the school. “We could go in there,” she said, nodding towards the college.

“It’s a university,” Bellamy replied. “They won’t let us in.”

“They will if they don’t know we’re not students,” Clarke grinned, tugging on his hand and leading him towards the building. Bellamy followed reluctantly, a playful smile on his lips and slight apprehension in his eyes. It soon dissipated – he was always safe with Clarke.

They walked in the crowd and Clarke shushed him whenever he tried to ask a question. They wandered through with the group, and Clarke elected to follow the largest group of people. She read the signs quickly as they walked – _lecture theatre up ahead­_ – and smiled.

“They won’t notice us in there,” she whispered to Bellamy, nodding towards the doors. There was a card scanner by them, sure, but Clarke just sped up until she was directly behind another student, zapping their card. The man held the door open for them and Clarke smiled gratefully, pulling Bellamy through. Students were dotted about all over the place; near the end of university and the course, probably on a final lecture. There didn’t seem to be a seating chart, so they took a space that felt inconspicuous and sat down.

“This is so surreal,” Bellamy told her lowly, glancing about. No one paid them any attention and Clarke smiled back.

“We’ll be in a place like this next year,” she replied. Bellamy nodded, eyes scanning every nook and cranny of the room. They’d both deferred their offers for a year so they could travel and be young for just one more moment before they had to slip back into routines of all-night study sessions and due dates.

Only a moment later did a man with a loose suit, tie barely knotted around his neck even though it was still early in the day, and a wild mess of hair, enter the room. He dumped his brief case on the desk and turned to the class.

“Final session,” he announced with a smile, and the class was silent. “We’ll be finishing off our work on the Greeks and then I’ll just be seeing you in our tutorial periods. I want all essays completed by the nineteenth at midnight, remember.” He sent a pointed look towards a few students, who snickered, before clicking along the power point. The topic was the ancient Greeks and Clarke felt like she had hit gold – Bellamy leant forward, enraptured all of a sudden in a history that he loved, would never live or know as well as those who were alive at the time.

He’d always held a special place in his heart for the legends and heroes of the ancient world; for Theseus and Hercules – for the gods like Frey and Pluto, Minerva and Hecate. Bellamy had told her every story he knew about the stars in the sky, had named Octavia after an Emperor’s sister, had the word ‘Atlas’ tattooed on the inside of his left arm, pressed against his side, which Clarke noticed him gently rubbing with his thumb, absent-mindedly as he listened to the lecture. Whilst Clarke was built with paint and hospitals; pink wine-induced hazes and surgical masks, Bellamy was formed with stories of the great and the tragic, with the blood of the gladiators in his body and the crown of Jupiter on his head.

No less than two hours later did they leave, Clarke overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge thrown at them and Bellamy, babbling about the words that had been said; the stories he hadn’t heard before and the world of which he adored. Clarke took his hand, swinging it between them as they wandered away from the university they had snuck into, now in search of lunch. She smiled up at him, listening to his ramblings and loving the lilt of his voice when he was excited.

“What?” he asked, pausing suddenly in his speech about Remus and Romulus.

“Nothing,” Clarke smiled.

“No, come on,” he nudged her arm, nodding. Clarke ducked her head and Bellamy squeezed her hand. She shrugged.

“I love you when you’re like this,” she told him. Bellamy’s smile was blinding.

“When I talk about history?”

“Not just that,” she mused. “When you’re excited. I love you when you’re excited.”

 

**iv**

“What do you think Octavia’s going to say?” Bellamy asked quietly, his arms wrapped around Clarke’s small frame. It was dark outside and they were sleeping under the stars in the bed of his truck; Delilah’s cold metal pressed against their backs and only a thin sleeping bag they shared protecting them from the cold. Clarke didn’t move for a while, didn’t say anything as she thought – so long that it must have seemed like she was asleep.

“I think she’ll ask you why you wanted to go,” Clarke replied eventually. Bellamy jumped a little at her voice before settling back into her embrace. Clarke curled her arm around his stomach, drawing gentle patterns with the tip of her finger against his side.

“And what do I tell her?”

“The truth – why you wanted to go.” Bellamy sighed noncommittally and Clarke snuggled closer into him. His arms tightened around her and she could see the vague outline of his face in her peripheral. “Tell me.”

“Why I’m here?”

“Yeah.” Their voices were soft in the darkness; fuzzy like everything was without light. The only things that were crisp now were the edges of the moon and the stars glinting above them.

“Because I love you,” he replied.

“That’s not going to be enough for Octavia,” Clarke replied, though she wanted more, too. They’d been out on their own for almost two months; seeing the country and living off of whatever she could pull from her account as they left different towns. They were sure that Abby was tracking them with each withdrawal, but hadn’t yet pulled the money. It was like she wanted them to be in love and to find themselves, but they also didn’t want them out of their sights.

But Clarke had her reasons for being out here, alone and happy with Bellamy, and he’d never told her his. Sometimes, ‘I love you’ wasn’t enough to answer the questions that danced around her mind.

“Because I’ve loved you for years,” Bellamy told her after a beat. “Ever since that day we were by the lake and you started drowning when your foot got caught on something under the water.” Clarke shifted a little, glancing up at Bellamy.

“That was years ago,” she said. He nodded, though his eyes were stuck firmly on the sky above them. Clarke settled back into his arms.

“Yeah, and we’ve always been around other people – you’re my best friend, Clarke, but getting alone time is so rare. I didn’t think we’d have the chance to figure out what we were if we stayed in Ark.” Clarke pushed her face into his chest a little more, taking slow breaths. She could smell him; he smelt just like he always had, something so _Bellamy_ , but she’d never managed to pin it down. “What about you?” She hummed questioningly. “Why are you here?”

“Because I love you,” she smiled, jokingly. Bellamy chuckled, squeezing his arms around her for a moment so it would be like she could see the smile on his face. “Because I think we needed space and time to get this right,” she replied. It was like him – they’d discussed this trip for days before taking off in the dead of night, only a few letters left behind. “Because we could be anyone out here, where no one knew us, and we could be whatever we needed to be.”

“Past tense,” Bellamy noted after a beat.

“What?”

“You said all of that in the past tense,” he explained.

“So?”

“So,” Bellamy sighed. “It sounds like you’re ready to go home.”

“You took that from me using the past tense?” Clarke asked, dry humour lacing her tone. She shifted, sitting up and leaning on her elbow so she could look at Bellamy. He was watching her; eyes black in the darkness. She couldn’t even see his freckles. He smiled, sighing, in that sad way in which he wasn’t sure.

“We _needed_ space to get it right,” he said. “ _Needed_ to figure out who we are together. We’ve done that, haven’t we?” Clarke was silent for a moment. “We know who we are together, who we are apart – we’ve got this right.”

“You want to go home,” she concluded.

“So do you,” he replied, sitting up and raising a pointed eyebrow. For a moment, they stared at one another before Clarke relented, sighing.

“I don’t _want_ to go home – I love this trip – but I think we should. We should go and see Octavia and our Mums and show them that we’re okay and what we did was for the best.”

“They’re not going to hate us,” Bellamy said, raising his hand and tilting Clarke’s chin up so she looked at him.

“They’re not,” she agreed. “Just a little mad.” Bellamy’s fingers were warm under her skin and he smiled.

“And they won’t get any madder if we take another few days before we leave,” he said, slowly, smirking. Clarke smiled back.

“They won’t,” she repeated. Bellamy nodded. He didn’t say anything else, just moved forward slowly until their lips were centimetres apart. Clarke breathed him in, yearning for the taste of him in her mouth, but they didn’t move. She tried to push forward, but Bellamy kept a hold on her chin, his lips curving in another smirk.

“Patience, Princess,” he told her, softly. He placed his forehead on hers; his skin heating up hers in the cold and she smiled, relishing in the contact. For a moment, it was just that – their foreheads touching and the world silent, waiting, holding its breath as the stars twinkled and the sun lit up a whole other part of the world.

Then, in one rush, the universe let go of its breath and Bellamy’s mouth was hungry on Clarke’s, ravenous and wanting. Clarke gave everything to him and she received everything of him in return.

 

**v.**

The world was bright and that’s because there were two suns that day. Clarke Griffin was a supernova and an inferno in her own right; she was bold and powerful and lit up the Earth, one step at a time. She laughed as if it surprised even herself and her eyes were the bluest imaginable, like she wanted to give even the sky on a perfect summer’s day a run for its money.

Then when the sun went down and Clarke dimmed, Bellamy was the night sky; a moon so peaceful and calm, so gentle and knowing with stars scattered across his skin. He held the sun in his arms, hoping for everything she was even if he never believed he’d have it. He watched the waves rolled across the shore and perfected the motions – _in and out, in and out_.

Together, in a truck named Delilah, with the windows rolled down as they sped home to Ark, the two of them were forces of nature, were torches to guide each other on the right path, were forever circling one another – a gravitational pull to the other since they day they were born.

Clarke laughed and Bellamy glanced over, tearing his eyes from the road for a moment.

“What’s so funny?” he asked, a smile playing across his lips.

“Us,” Clarke replied. “I think it’s just funny that the universe decided to place my soulmate right in front of me when I was born, and I didn’t even have to look for him.” Bellamy grinned, looking back to the road.

“Still took you eighteen years,” he said.

“I wouldn’t change it for a second.”

**Author's Note:**

> Im never good at endings but w/e   
> THANKS FOR READING  
> THATS GREAT OF YOU  
> I LOVE COMMENTS AND KUDOS SO HELP ME OUT THERE PLEASE AND THANK YOU


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